Go To See Alaska - Part 6 -Wrangell Mountains and More Scenic Highways

In case if you see overlapped lines of text or some lines of text become obscured behind a picture on this web page, please change the page magnification (zoom) factor to eliminate such problems by pressing these two keys "Ctrl +" simultaneously or these two keys "Ctrl -" simultaneously.

Please press the F11 key on your keyboard to get full-screen view of photos and web page. Pressing F11 key again will return to your normal screen with various tool bars.

Wrangell-St Elias National Park in southeast Alaska is the largest national park in USA, six times the size of Yellowstone National Park. It is home to the highest concentration of peaks over 16,000 feet in North America, 9 of North America’s 16 tallest peaks are in this national park. Mount St. Elias in here is second tallest in the United States at 18,008 feet; and Mount Wrangell is tallest active volcano in the United States at 14,163 feet. This national Park is known as "America’s Mountain Kingdom" and as Himalayas of North America. In addition to many tall mountains and huge glaciers, there are also abundance of wildlife in here. Wrangell Mountains are named for Baron Wrangell who was Russian governor of Alaska from 1830 to 1835.

As the most remote and least developed of Alaska’s national parks, the only two roads into this national park are unpaved gravel roads that are very rough. They are not suitable for regular sedan cars with low clearance to go in. But the spectacular high mountains in this national park are visible from the paved highways along the boundaries of this huge national Park. Therefore, in the afternoon of August 18, 2009, we drove on paved Highway 1 (i.e., Glenn Highway and Toc Cut Off Road) along the northern boundary, on paved Richardson Highway along the western boundary, and on paved Edgerton Highway (i.e., Highway 10) to enjoy the gorgeous views of these snow clad mountains. There are several pullout parking areas along these paved highways for tourists to enjoy the fantastic views and to take beautiful pictures.

In the evening of August 18, we stayed in Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge in Copper Center near Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This very nice hotel is perched on the top of a hill with a fantastic view of the Wrangell mountains.

There is a tour bus ( Phone number: 907-822-5978) with a knowledgeable driver/guide at Chitina to take tourists into this national park from west entrance along the unpaved McCarthy Road to enjoy many stops along the way for sight-seeing and picture-taking. However, our one-week tour schedule did not have enough time for us to take this bus tour.

We heard that in the summer season, the Copper River is full of salmon. There are also many Fish Wheels in the Copper River to catch many salmon automatically. Fish wheels consist of two large baskets that turn on an axle. They are rotated by the river current and scoop up passing fish as they turn. Captured fish slide down a chute into a holding box that is emptied several times a day.

On the Glenn Highway (i.e., Hwy 1) from Slana to Chistochina, one may see these fish wheels operating in the Copper River. However, my schedule of one-week driving tour did not have time for me to go down to the Copper River to get a close up view of the operation of such fish wheels. I also did not know where was the back road or hiking trail to go from the paved highway down to the river. On the other hand, a video is available at the following YouTube website:

In the morning of August 19, we drove west from the east end of the paved breathtaking Glenn Highway (i.e., Highway 1), the National Scenic Byway, near Wrangell St. Elias National Park to Anchorage, then we drove south on the paved scenic Seward Highway to Seward. The scenery on these two highways are fantastic as shown in the following photos.

We saw another female moose on the roadside when we were driving on the Glenn Highway

Brightly-colored slopes of Sheep Mountain with volcanic gypsum dominate the view near mile post from 108 to 118 on the Glenn Highway. The mountain is home to Dall Sheep and is a reserve for them. Those sheep are attracted to the mineral licks on these mountain sides

Mountains and more mountains, tourists are treated to vistas of forested slopes, snowy peaks, glacier-filled

Our rental car on Glenn Highway. It was a Subaru Forester with All-Wheel Drive. When I made the rental car reservation, I specifically asked for an All-Wheel Drive vehicle which is appropriate and important for driving tour in Alaska.

We stopped here, opened the tailgate to make sandwiches for our lunch. The scenery along Glenn Highway was so beautiful that we did not want to waste any time to go to a restaurant for lunch. (After the daytime sightseeing activities are finished, we do go to nice restaurants to enjoy nice dinner.)

The massive Metanuska Glacier is 4 miles wide at its terminus and extends for many miles back into the Chugach Mountains. Along Glenn Highway to Anchorage, no other glacier comes closer to the highway than the Matanuska Glacier, source of the Matanuska River.

Mountain peak with special cloud along the paved scenic Seward Highway (i.e., Highway 9). After we finished driving west on Glenn Highway and arrived at Anchorage, we turned south on Seward Highway to drive to Seward on August 19.

Potter Marsh along Seward Highway at milepost 117.4 is one of Alaska's best birdwatching spots. There is a large parking lot with toilet facility. It also has a long (1500-ft) boardwalk that extends out into Potter Marsh for tourists to enjoy watching many kinds of birds and wildlife in action and spawning salmon swimming in the creek as shown in the following photos. Thousands of migrating birds rest here including trumpeter swans, rednecked grebes, golden eyes, and pintails, bald eagles soar over the marsh in search of prey, sometimes harried by terns and gulls.

We saw a juvenile bald eagle eating salmon near the creek in Potter Marsh.

The feather on the head and the tail of bald eagle do not turn into white color until it reaches the mature age of 5 years or more.

We also saw many shore birds and waterfowl in Potter Marsh.

環顧四周連綿不斷的群山錯落有秩，層次分明。

Seward Highway hugs the dramatic shorelines of Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in America. Chugach State Park's 3000-foot mountains jut up on your left. On the right, the sprawling, sometimes four-mile-wide flats of Turnagain Arm seem to stretch like a plain to the opposite shores of Cook Inlet, where mammoth sloping mountains abruptly stop their flat expanse. Each turn reveals another scenic wonder.

Spawning red (sockeye) salmon (紅鮭魚) and other kinds of salmon in crystal clear waters of Portage Creek as viewed from the Williwaw Fish Viewing Platform as we drove from Whitter through Portage Highway to connect into Sward Highway on August 15, 2009. This viewing site is located at mile 4 of the Portage Highway near the Begich Boggs Visitor Center. Maps showing location of Williwaw Fish Viewing Platform can be seen at the following websites:

Bore Tide at Turnagain Arm:Similar to Bay of Fundy in eastern Canada, QianTang Jiang (錢塘江) in southeast China and several other special bays, Turnagain Arm in Alaska has two special phenomena of (1) powerful and long Bore Tide and (2) very large tidal differential (in the order of 50 feet) between high tide and low tide. The photos of spectacular, powerful and dangerous bore tide at QianTang Jiang with HangZhou Bay can be seen at the following website:

The long bore tide roaring along the wide HangZhou Bay in the second video clip is often referred to as a silver dragon.

The day-to-day bore tide at these Arm and bays are mild and are not as powerful and dangerous as shown in the two websites listed above. Those powerful and dangerous bore tides occur only under suitable dates, times and conditions. For example, the chances for seeing a large bore tide at Turnagain Arm are best during the five-day window that surrounds the new moon or full moon when the additional effects of the sun are also included. Also, tides tend to be greatest annually at the equinoxes (March and September). Furthermore, strong opposing winds can also enhance the strength of the bore tide.

The main reason for such exceptional large tide differential and such powerful bore tide is due to the resonance between the gravitational-tidal pull of the moon and the natural sloshing frequency of ocean water in these special bays and arms. Every basin of water has a natural resonance frequency, that is, a natural vibration associated with the time it takes the water to slosh back and forth from one end of the basin to the other. The geometry and the length of these bays and arms are such that it takes about 12 hours and 25 minutes for the tidal wave to go from the bay mouth all the way into the bay throat and to come all the way back out In other words, the natural sloshing frequency of ocean water in these special bays is about 12 hours and 25 minutes per cycle which is the same as the cycle of the gravitational-tidal pull from the moon on the ocean water as the earth rotates. It is not exactly 12 hours because the moon is moving and is orbiting around the earth. The synchronization of the diurnal variation of gravitational tidal force from the moon with the natural oscillation frequency of these special bays results in a powerful resonance that greatly amplifies the magnitude of the tidal differential in these special bays.

Both the width and the depth of these bays decrease from the mouth of bay towards the throat of bay. With the powerful driving force from the tidal resonance, water literally "piles up" as it is being driven from the large and deep mouth of the bay towards the narrow and shallow throat of the bay. Such pile-up effect forces the rapidly rising tide waters to form a tidal flood with a raised abrupt front wall known as the bore tide.

Wildlife and Bore Tide:

The bore tide at Turnagain Arm has additional wildlife features to make it even more interesting. The wall of bore tide often has many jumping fish -- salmon and hooligan which attract eagles - a whirling mass of eagles and ravens flying along like a tornado as the bore tide roared in. Harbor seals often also ride the bore tide into Turnagain Arm, half hour later when the water gets deeper, the white Beluga whales come in chasing many salmon as shown in the following YouTube movie clip:

then sometime killer whales (Orca) come in chasing the white Beluga whales. There are several pull-off parking areas along the Seward Highway around Turnagain Arm for visitors to see such special wildlife actions associated with the bore tide in this area. Some parking areas are also equipped with public high-power telescope to help visitors to enjoy close up views of such spectacle.

After enjoying the beautiful sunset view of Kenai Lake shown above, we arrived at Seward in the evening of August 19, 2009 after seeing many majestic mountains shown above. The following morning, we got on a tour ship from Seward Harbor to tour the exciting Kenai Fjord National Park for a lot of close encounters with abundance of sea wildlife and for beautiful scenery as reported in Part 7 of 11 at:

寧靜的村舍，幽深的湖泊，美麗的青山倒影，美得撩人，美得醉人， 覺得已進入絕世之鄉， 這裡是遺世獨立的人間仙境。

Quiet, peaceful and beautiful lakes along Seward Highway surrounded by high mountains.

I also took three movie clips of these red (sockeye) salmon and other kinds of salmon spawning in the crystal clear water of Portage Creek as shown in the following three YouTube websites:

The spawning action of a pair of salmon can be seen more clearly near the end of the third movie clip.

As a bird watcher, I would love to go to see such concentration of millions of shorebirds. But our Alaska tour being in August is not the right time to go to see those migratory shorebirds in Copper River Delta.

Part of the long boardwalk in Potter Marsh for visitors to view many kinds of birds and wildlife in action and salmon swimming in the creek and pond.

Due to the large tidal differential, very large areas of ocean floor of such special bays are exposed as huge mud flats during low tide as shown above when we were driving from Homer back to Anchorage on August 22, 2009. There are plenty of warning around Turnagain Arm as:

WARNING: Don’t walk out onto the mud flats—people have died by getting stuck in the glacial silt and being drowned by the incoming tide!

However, when I was driving along the Turnagain Arm, it was not during those special dates and special times such that I was not lucky enough to see such interesting bore tide in Turnagain Arm.